


The Strongest

by meguri_aite



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Teikou Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:11:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3220208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meguri_aite/pseuds/meguri_aite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It started out like any very bad idea does.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>In other words, it had looked a lot like a very good idea – a pretty straightforward one that he had acted on without second thoughts – right up until it very much wasn’t.</i>
</p>
<p> <i>Aomine rubbed his neck, angry with whatever had possessed him to think that anything Akashi did was ever simple and straightforward.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strongest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> written with many thanks to [readerofasaph](http://archiveofourown.org/users/readerofasaph/pseuds/readerofasaph) for being [a wonderful gift-giver](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2583791) at the Interhigh,  
> as a testament to utter shippiness of miragen,  
> and with hopes that rarepair version of it can be entertaining, too:)  
> thank you, once again!
> 
> [throwingscissorsatinternets](http://throwingscissorsatinternets.tumblr.com/) has my eternal gratitude for indulging and helping me with this (and for everything ever, too).

It started out like any very bad idea does.

In other words, it had looked a lot like a very good idea – a pretty straightforward one that he had acted on without second thoughts – right up until it very much wasn’t.

Aomine rubbed his neck, angry with whatever had possessed him to think that anything Akashi did was ever simple and straightforward.

 

It started out like this.

The tensions near the end of the match were high, but not because their opponent in the semi-finals was anything remotely like a challenge. As usual, Teiko had to find its own entertainment again, and the thrill was in their private little game of tag. It wasn’t a true match – nothing was, these days – but testing the limits of how much they could get away with helped kill the time. 

The answer was - everything. Aomine grinned as he slammed another ball into the basket, which yeah, was a bit of 'in your face' both to their opponents, who were crumbling under the growing gap reflected on the screen, and Midorima, whose turn it was to score. That earned him a pointed glare and a silent promise of a well-aimed basketball to the head during the next practice, but Aomine didn’t care. He would never let anyone hold him back, opponents or teammates: he would play the basketball he wanted to play, because that was what he did.

But of course, something had to spoil his fun. It always did.

The buzzer announced the end of the quarter and the match. Aomine felt his shoulders sag, disappointed that the time flew by too fast again, and headed off for the customary closing line-ups and shaking hands. 

Before he got to the center of the court, a quiet voice made him stop in his tracks.

“Daiki.” Akashi’s voice was cool, his expression the usual mix of bored indifference and unsettling focus. “Find me in the captain’s room later.”

Aomine had no clue what brought this on - was it the last ball? but it wouldn’t be the first or the last one he scored on a whim, so why would anyone waste their breath on that - but nodded anyway. He felt his hackles rise and all senses snap back into full alert mode. He never questioned his instincts, because they never lied to him, and he rarely disagreed with what they told him to do. Most of the time they pushed him to challenge everything – except, he had to admit, they usually made some sort of silent exception for Akashi. 

Aomine paused, puzzled. It wasn’t like he was afraid of Akashi – hell no. He acknowledged him as player, yes. Everyone in Teiko was strong, but it took a special strength to captain the generation of monsters. It was its own thing, independent of being a regular by the sheer virtue of power. Aomine was confident in his own skills to claim the position of the strongest on the team, and it was fun to reassert that regularly against whoever wanted to challenge him for the title. 

It just so happened that with Akashi, there had been no competition. Probably because they played such different positions, Aomine thought with a shrug. He never wanted to lead the team, it was much more fun to run free, and he assumed that Akashi, in turn, was more interested in his own games of pulling strings and directing streams. As far as Aomine was concerned, Akashi was welcome to them, as long as they didn't cross paths.

The prickles running up and down his spine had to be a sign that he would not say no to finding out what exactly would happen should their paths cross one day.

Aomine realized he had gone through the motions of changing his clothes and hopping on the bus back to Teiko without registering any of it only when he found himself in front of the door to the captain’s room.

“Yo, Akashi. I’m here.”

However, the room was empty. He really hadn’t been there a lot, Aomine thought as he invited himself inside. He never cared to – nothing of interest could possibly happen in a room that had a goddamn shougi ban in it. He looked at the thing suspiciously and made sure not to touch it as he made his way to one of the chairs by the window.

It wasn't long before the door opened again, letting Akashi in. 

"Daiki," he said, and adjusted the towel draped over his shoulders. Aomine briefly wondered why he still had it on – the match had ended a while ago.

“Did you want anything?”

“Yes, actually,” Akashi said, cracking his neck in a small, contained movement, and closed the door behind himself.

Looking more closely at him Aomine thought that there was an extra stiffness to Akashi that might be a sign he was stressed or tired. The idea itself was unusual – yeah, they all worked out during practice, but Akashi still usually looked like he could put on his jacket and go right to a violin concert or some such fancy nonsense at the end of the day.

But Aomine didn’t have time to ponder on it, because Akashi was done fiddling with the door – was he locking it? - and came to stand next to Aomine. A spark of ungrounded alarm shot though his spine, and he suppressed an involuntary shudder.

“What is it?” he asked. He was finding that looking at Akashi from below was the weirdest experience, very disorienting.

“I was thinking you might help me,” Akashi said, not bothering to make himself any clearer, or talking to him any more comfortable. Aomine thought his neck might cramp if he’d have to keep on craning it, but didn’t voice his concerns.

“Me?”

“Yes, you,” Akashi nodded his affirmation. “You’re uncomplicated. I could do with that.”

Before Aomine could argue – and he would have, too, because the way Akashi said it could not have been a compliment – he was silenced in a way that was as efficient as it was surprising.

Akashi finally deigned to bend closer to him.

To kiss him on the mouth.

Aomine remembered he had to protest when his lungs started burning from the lack of air. It had to be the shock, he thought dimly - that and the fact that Akashi kissed like he did everything else – with withdrawn concentration and paralyzing efficiency.

He gasped in a lungful of air and stared uncomprehendingly in Akashi’s face. It was a rather satisfied face of a person pleased with his choice of drink for the evening.

There were probably many things Aomine could have said, but his breathing was still very uneven, so the only thing he rasped out was, “Why?”

Akashi carefully fisted his hands at the collar of Aomine’s jersey, the cold fingers sending shivers down his back, and answered the question in the same tone he used for giving out instructions on court.

“It’s nothing personal, Daiki.” It could have sounded condescending if it wasn’t so dispassionate and matter-of-fact. Akashi leaned back a little as if to get a better look at Aomine. “It’s the simplicity, as I said. That, and what is usually referred to as animal magnetism. As an alternative to – the complicated, to put it like that - it’s quite attractive.”

Aomine blinked, unsure which word to zoom in on. Akashi was so unnecessarily cryptic at times, for no reason at all than to annoy people, probably, but it was still hard to ignore him when he was talking. Must be the captain thing.

“So one could say that this urge is similarly uncomplicated,” Akashi continued, doing something to Aomine’s collar that mysteriously had him craning his neck at an even sharper angle than before. “I need to unwind, and you obviously have excess energy that you can’t find a good use for.”

The growing dryness at the back of his throat was making him restless, urging him to take some action, so Aomine sat back in his chair. This ended up pulling Akashi closer to him in one jerky movement, and Aomine watched, wide-eyed, as Akashi toppled on him with a half-smile.

“I understand you have a point to make, Daiki,” he said with faint amusement. “I won’t keep you from that any longer.”

Akashi leaned in to kiss him again, and the half-smile still playing at the corner of his lips felt like a taunt flung into Aomine’s face.

Growling, he reached out a hand to grab Akashi by the shoulder. He didn’t think about what he should do next – he knew a challenge when he saw one, and he’d be damned if he backed down just because it didn’t come on the court. He dragged the towel off Akashi’s shoulders, determined to prove that he wasn’t fazed, and that Akashi would get the double of what he dared him with.

The hair at the nape of Akashi’s neck was still damp, he found with surprise. He grinned, and threw himself into the challenge.

* * *

Aomine felt very good about himself, afterwards.

He walked the school corridors, cheered by the thought that for sure, he came out on top in this one. He knew that improvisation and free-form tackling of obstacles were his strong points, but it felt good to get proof of that – and from what he knew of Akashi as a captain,no criticism from him was a compliment enough.

He didn’t want compliments – leave them to sensitive types. Acknowledgement was enough. Settling the question who was the strongest between two worthy players was its own reward.

However, the spring in his step somewhat deflated when, after a few days, he started wondering if it wasn’t as clear as he thought.

Which is to say, he started suspecting that Akashi wasn’t really going to admit his defeat.

It’s not like Aomine was paying extra attention to him on purpose, hell no. Same as usual, really. It was just – he couldn’t help noticing the stuff he got a close brush-up against, okay? But no matter how much he looked, he didn’t see any admission of defeat from Akashi, who went about on his usual business of quietly ordering the universe around him into whatever idea of order he had in mind.

If anything, Aomine noticed with growing bewilderment, Akashi looked – well, not exactly smug, because Akashi rarely ever bothered to go into extremes – unconcerned. Complacent. The stiffness around him seemed to have been replaced by lazy buoyancy that went contrary to all Aomine’s expectations. Of course, he had never seen Akashi overthrown, or even had thought what he might look like if it ever happened– it wasn’t the first thing that came to mind, in all honesty – but he strongly suspected this wasn’t what defeat looked like on Akashi, either.

And what Akashi’s face absolutely didn’t show any signs of was that he knew or cared about Aomine’s recently proven superiority.

By the end of the week, Aomine’s confusion grew into restlessness. Since it wasn’t the kind he could work out on the court – damn Akashi for taking the issue away from basketball, where winners and losers were always clear as day – the restlessness quickly turned into annoyance. Aomine felt cheated out of a well-won victory, and he wanted to know why.

And because Akashi was Akashi and gave nothing away voluntarily, Aomine found himself knocking on the door to the captain’s room again, late one evening.

“Is there something you wanted, Daiki?”

He had steeled himself for a brawl, which was why, he thought angrily, Akashi’s equivalent of a good-natured face kind of messed with his groove.

“I won, right?” Aomine asked unceremoniously, bracing himself against the doorway. Beating around the bush would do him no good anyway – it was a given that Akashi was better at playing hide-and-seek with words. It wasn’t what he came here for, anyway,

“Won what, exactly?” Akashi asked, raising one eyebrow ever so slightly. His expression of polite disinterest could have fooled anyone, but not Aomine, who only gritted his teeth.

“You know what. After the semi-finals.” Aomine tried to shrug off his growing annoyance with Akashi’s ways and this conversation in particular.

Akashi didn’t seem to be in any hurry to change his ways, because he just opened his eyes a fraction wider in an absolutely fake gesture of surprise.

“Do you mean to imply that I was bested at something, Daiki?”

His voice, still unfailingly even, did weird things to the air, which seemed to drop into subzero temperatures. Aomine shifted his feet, which felt cold all of a sudden, and tried to think of a way to steer this conversation into some clearer direction.

But Akashi didn’t give Aomine any time to say anything that would have done him no favors in the long run.

“I think there has been a certain misunderstanding,” he said in the same voice as before, and yanked Aomine by his uniform tie into the room, slamming the door shut with a sound not unlike a springing trap.

They didn’t have the chance to finish the conversation.

* * *

As things were now, Aomine was at a loss, thoughts muddled and back aching something fierce. He had no idea what to say or do about it, which was why he was determined to admit nothing.

What was most unfair, though, was that he still didn’t know where things went terribly wrong. One minute, he was swept up in a challenge – which he was winning, too! – and sure, it was not anything he had expected, but he wasn’t doing so badly, even if he said so himself. But another - he’d be damned if he knew what was happening; they might as well have been playing shougi.

Aomine winced, remembering the shougi ban. He was definitely not setting his foot in that room anytime soon, not in a million years. He carefully didn’t think about what he’d do if Akashi actually issued one of his personal invitations again.

That was not to say that he was afraid of going there; rather, his instincts were strongly suggesting that it wasn’t very wise to try and demand answers from Akashi again. Even though Aomine was still not very clear on how exactly his gut feeling had landed him into this situation in the first place, he decided to trust it and keep his distance.

He didn’t have any trouble doing that, at least. Akashi kept to his Akashi ways, which were pretty removed from whatever Aomine did. It suited him just fine, because Aomine really didn’t want to know, and if he noticed an odd smile on Akashi, he stubbornly refrained from making any conclusions about it. Let Midorima or whoever else was keen on cryptic wordplay to crack that enigma, thank you very much.

Watching Akashi observe his team from the sidelines, interfering only when it was absolutely necessary, it occurred to Aomine that it was probably some fortunate cosmic arrangement that at least in basketball they had clear-cut roles that were so different in nature. He really didn’t want to imagine what sort of headache a clash on the court would give him if a collision outside it was already so confusing.

Yeah, that was it, then. There were two strongest people in Teiko, and that was how things were.

For now.


End file.
